$18 Billion a Year in Job Training. No Stats on Results.

Senator Tom Coburn had the Government Accountability Office (GAO) do a study on job training programs.The study revealed that the federal government spends $18 billion a year on job training.

The study also reported that there are 47 different federal job-training programs. A total of five of these have produced data since 2004 on how many people receiving the training got jobs.

Nevertheless, President Obama recently said that 90% of those receiving such training had jobs within three months. It is not clear where this information ca,e from. It did not come from at least 42 of the programs.

Coburn concluded: “The vast majority of money we spend in job training doesn’t go to job training, it goes to employ people in those job training federal programs.”

That is to say, the job-training programs are basically the same as all other federal programs. But he did not mention this.

The study found some media-worthy but ultimately irrelevant examples of waste:

Some job training participants spent their days sitting on a bus.

Some were trained for jobs that didn’t exist.

Others were paid to sit through educational sessions about jobs they already had.

High school students were knowingly exposed to the cancer-causing agent asbestos as part of a job training program.

Funds were misspent to pay a contractor for ghost employees and to purchase video games.

In one state, workforce agency employees took more than 100 gambling trips to casinos mostly during work hours.

In this respect, the programs are like any federal program. They led to some really juicy examples of waste.

Conclusion: the news media can always use more studies from the GAO that highlight boondoggles.

Reports like this never change anything, but they make terrific sound bites.

President Obama had a different version. At a recent non-campain speech funded by taxpayers, he said: “What’s the better way to make our economy stronger, give more tax breaks to every millionaire and billionaire in the country, or make investments in education and research and health care and job training?”

Put differently, he might have said: “What’s the better way to make our economy stronger? Give more tax breaks to every millionaire and billionaire in the country, or keep federal job-training bureaucrats on the dole?”

Mitt Romney countered: “Let’s take that money, give it back to the state, let you fashion your own programs so that you can train your own workers for the jobs of tomorrow.”

Put differently, he might have said: “Let’s take that money, give it back to the state, and let state bureaucrats fashion their programs to keep them on the dole.”

Ron Paul’s former staff economist (me), said: “Let’s not take the money from anyone. Instead, let’s get rid of all federal job-training programs, and let today’s well-paid federal job-training specialists test their skills in the real world.”

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5 thoughts on “$18 Billion a Year in Job Training. No Stats on Results.”

On what planet or what reasonable assembly of thinking adults is the government, ours or any other, capable of training people for jobs? Government does not even begin to understand fiscal responsibility, let alone skills in problem solving, productivity, efficiency, teamwork… Government needs to be in the business of defending the Constitution, and out of our pockets for their pet projects. The senate hasn't passed a budget in years, congress hasn't added value to this nation in decades, and this president has only damaged this great nation. The government has failed in education, business, human rights, environment, everything that they have touched outside of the limits of the constitution.

It is way past time to put government back in it's place and let We the People succeed or fail on our own.

Shovel ready jobs, yes, that's the ticket. The only jobs I know of are the OWS that are being funding by yours truly (BO, Soros, ACORN). Oh!, we are cooking now. Coburn, don't wast your time, you guys know exactly what is going on, why bother.

Sounds to me like there are 5 of the 47 programs that are in need of discipline. They should know better than to try to outperform the other 42, making them look bad and all!! For shame!!! Maybe another training program is in order to teach them how to do it the "real" government way.